Furrer P B, Manning R S, Maddocks J H
Département de Mathématiques, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland.
Biophys J. 2000 Jul;79(1):116-36. doi: 10.1016/S0006-3495(00)76277-1.
Within the context of DNA rings, we analyze the relationship between intrinsic shape and the existence of multiple stable equilibria, either nicked or cyclized with the same link. A simple test, based on a perturbation expansion of symmetry breaking within a continuum elastic rod model, provides good predictions of the occurrence of such multiple equilibria. The reliability of these predictions is verified by direct computation of nicked and cyclized equilibria for several thousand DNA minicircles with lengths of 200 and 900 bp. Furthermore, our computations of equilibria for nicked rings predict properties of the equilibrium distribution of link, as calculated by much more computationally intensive Monte Carlo simulations.
在DNA环的背景下,我们分析了内在形状与多个稳定平衡的存在之间的关系,这些平衡无论是带切口的还是具有相同连环数的环化形式。基于连续弹性杆模型中对称性破缺的微扰展开的一个简单测试,对这种多个平衡的出现给出了很好的预测。通过对数千个长度为200和900碱基对的DNA小环的带切口和环化平衡进行直接计算,验证了这些预测的可靠性。此外,我们对带切口环的平衡计算预测了连环数平衡分布的性质,这是通过计算量更大的蒙特卡罗模拟计算得出的。